Pain medicine : the official journal of the American Academy of Pain Medicine
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The objective of this study was to review the epigenetic modifications involved in the transition from acute to chronic pain and to identify potential targets for the development of novel, individualized pain therapeutics. ⋯ Epigenetic analysis may identify mechanisms critical to the development of chronic pain after injury, and may provide new pathways and target mechanisms for future drug development and individualized medicine.
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Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is estimated to affect 2% of the general U.S. population and chronic pain is a common comorbidity among persons with HCV. The primary purpose of this study was to compare health service utilization of U.S. military veterans with HCV with and without the presence of comorbid chronic pain. ⋯ Patients with HCV and chronic pain utilize medical services to a greater extent than patients with HCV but no chronic pain. Future studies that examine the efficacy of both pharmacological and nonpharmacological pain treatment for patients with comorbid HCV and chronic pain appear warranted.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Measurement of affective and activity pain interference using the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI): Cancer and Leukemia Group B 70903.
The Brief Pain Inventory (BPI) was designed to yield separate scores for pain intensity and interference. It has been proposed that the pain interference factor can be further broken down into unique factors of affective (e.g., mood) and activity (e.g., work) interference. The purpose of this analysis was to confirm this affective/activity interference dichotomy. ⋯ These results confirm that the BPI can be used to quantify the degree to which pain separately interferes with affective and activity aspects of a patient's everyday life. These findings will provide clinical trialists, pharmaceutical sponsors, and regulators with confidence in the flexibility of the BPI as they consider the use of this instrument to assist with understanding the patient experience as it relates to treatment.
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Catastrophizing is a maladaptive response to pain and is one of the factors that contribute to the chronicity of some pain syndromes. The Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS) assists both treatment planning and outcome assessment. Its use is limited in Portuguese-speaking countries because of the lack of a validated translated version. We conducted the validation of the Brazilian Portuguese (BP)-PCS and explored its psychometric properties. This study reports the internal consistency, factor structure, and its capability to discriminate pain reported by patients with specific chronic pain conditions. ⋯ Our findings support the validity and reliability of the BP-PCS. The scale showed satisfactory psychometric properties. CFA provides support for the three-factor structure reported in previous studies. This factor structure presented good discriminative properties to identify catastrophizers who present with mild chronic pain, fibromyalgia, and CTH. The BP-PCS is a valuable tool for use in scientific studies and in the clinical setting in patients with chronic pain in Brazilian Portuguese-speaking countries.